When the Sochi Winter Paralympic Games open on Friday night, a team of seven skiers and five curlers will be flying the flag for Great Britain as a potent medal-winning force in two sports funded by only £750,000 from UK Sport.

“We have a great depth in this two-sport team. We’ve got our youngest skier at 15 and our oldest skier at 34. We have pretty much all classes represented in Alpine Skiing which shows depth in recent development in this country,” team leader Tony McAllister said.

The greatest medal hopes are the trio in women’s visually impaired (VI) skiing, though ex-serviceman Mick Brennan, who lost both legs while working with a bomb disposal team in Iraq 10 years ago, is a regular top-10 finisher in the men’s mono-bob ski events.

The trio of VI skiers, Kelly Gallagher, Jade Etherington and Millie Knight, all compete in the same women’s downhill events. Each one has a guide skier.

Gallagher goes in the slalom, giant slalom, super combined, super-G, and downhill. From Bangor, County Down, the 28-year-old Gallagher won four medals – two silver, two bronze – from five events at the 2013 IPC Alpine Skiing World Championships in La Molina, Spain, while Etherington also won bronze in the super-G there, followed by a silver medal in the same discipline at the Sochi test event.

The rivals represent GB’s leading charge for the medals board. “Sochi for me is the culmination of four seasons of me and Charlotte [Evans, her guide skier] working together and we’re excited to get out there and ski the best we can,” Gallagher said.

“There is something different and unique about the Paralympics and we are so delighted to be competing alongside so many other amazing, talented athletes. We really can’t wait for the competition to get going now.”

They are joined by Knight, who was 15 in January, the youngest athlete to ski for GB at a Winter Paralympic Games. She will compete in slalom and giant slalom.

Brennan, the oldest skier, from Doncaster, will compete in slalom, giant slalom, and super-G. The former sergeant in the Royal Signals started to learn adaptive skiing, as a double-amputee, in November 2008 as part of his rehabilitation programme at Headley Court, following a suicide bomb incident which changed his life forever.

His best result, ninth in the men’s super combined at the 2013 world championships, comes in a field where the top 10 skiers are separated by a second.

Eight other potential ex-military winter paralympians are also shadowing the team as part of the British Paralympic Association’s ‘Inspiration Programme’ run in conjunction with the military charity Help For Heroes.

McAllister believes rivalry has spurred the trio of women in the visually impaired events. “More athletes in every class keeps that element of competition constant in training as well as the actual races that we attend throughout the year, and keeps them sharp and keeps them hungry as athletes,” he said.

“We have to operate as a team to get it done logistically to keep the costs achievable for everybody. They’re definitely team-mates through the year and when they are off the hill more so, but when they’re on the hill they have individual agendas. When they come off the hill, they are buddies – most of the time.”

“I’m optimistic of medal success not because of anything other than that we’ve prepared absolutely as best we can. With the resources that we have we’ve put together, the best opportunities and the best environment and the best staff that we can get. And everybody’s matched that from the athlete side of things – I can’t fault the effort, the sacrifice.

GB’s sledge hockey team missed out narrowly in getting to the Games in the final qualifying tournament while there are no snowboarders and no Nordic skiers.

GB’s last medal at the Winter Paralympics was the silver medal the curlers took in Turin in 2006 but head coach Tony Zummack said that “any one of the 10 teams can win the medals”.

A round-robin nine matches will decide the four semi-finalists. GB finished sixth in last year’s test event in Sochi.

Angie Malone is the only Winter Paralympic medallist in the GB team, having competed in Turin, and went to Vancouver four years later in spite of being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008.

“With recovery and chemotherapy I was able to continue with my training, so I was really proud to be selected and to go out to Vancouver and take part there,” said the veteran Scot.

“We’re feeling very confident going out to Sochi. We’ve had a great season – we won three golds and three silvers in international competitions which is a great return.”

Malone will compete alongside Aileen Nielson, the skip, who was also in the Vancouver quintet.

Under Zummack, a Canadian, the squad have been working on three components. “Team dynamics, becoming technically more accurate and becoming tactically more aware. That’s the way we are advancing,” explained Neilson. “I think we realise that it can come down to the last stone and it’s not over until the last stone is thrown.”

The danger overshadowing the Games remains the territorial expansion and unrest in the Crimea.

The International Paralympic Committee has been quick to distance itself from the political situation.

“As with situations around the world, we hope a peaceful resolution can be found in the spirit of the Olympic Truce, which has covered the Paralympic Games since 2006,” said IPC spokesperson Craig Spence.

“We want the story here to be the great festival of sport that has already taken place in Sochi and will continue now that athletes are arriving for the start of the Winter Paralympics on March 7. The IPC is here in Sochi to organise a major international sporting event, and not to get involved in global politics.”

Meanwhile, David Murdoch, Great Britain’s Olympic curling skip, says he and his family have been left shocked and devastated by the sudden death of his father, Matt, just 12 days after he was in the crowd in Sochi to watch his son win a silver medal.

Murdoch senior, himself a three-time Scottish curling champion and a former president of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, died of a suspected heart attack at his farm in Lockerbie on Wednesday night. He was 70.